Can't Get Enough, We Want Moher!

Galway

Friday May 8, 2026        

Distance traveled: 236 km

Cumlative distance: 1095 km

Temperature: 12.5 - 14.0 with clouds and occasional sunny breaks. And occasional showers. 

We needed to refuel before leaving Killarney, so we stopped and put 35 litres of diesel fuel in to fill up the car. We still had 200 km of range by the car's estimate but we didn't know if fuel might get a little scarce as we traveled north. We had traveled 850 km already so I was pretty amazed at the fuel efficiency of the Skoda deisel engine and when I filled the tank, the revised estimate was a range of 900 km. However, we drove 175 km before the range estimate started decreasing. Pretty amazing. I guess it was worth the extra five or ten "cents" a litre to pay for diesel. 

Our first adventure of the day was a ferry crossing of the Shannon Estuary. Not that a ferry crossing is so special but we saw numerous dolphins in the water in areas around the boat.  Nan spotted the first one but studying the water after seeing one, we saw several others as they crested out of the water and the sun glistening on their backs.  The other special thing about the ferry is that we made it on. We hadn't made any kind of plan to target a specific sailing, just going on faith that it would work out. I think a few cars behind us going on faith had their luck run out. 

Fake castle foreground, REAL castle background.

Isn't that amazing? Souvenir shops built rihjt into the hillside!

If you have looked at our tracks on Spotwalla, you are probably thinking we hit the big time driving to Quilty. They should have named it Guilty. As Charged. There were no quilts and no quilt shops. "Maybe it was named after something other than 'quilts'", says Nan. Well maybe because there wasn't much there except a view of the ocean (which was still good). But no quilts.

We came to the famous Cliffs of Moher, along the coastline. We could see from a considerable distance several tour buses and hundreds of cars parked, so we knew were at the right place. We paid 29 Euros, though we weren't sure what for. The view? The parking? We quickly learned that we paid for infrastructure.  We are out in the middle of NOWHERE but there are concession stands, souvenir shops, restaurants, an interpretive centre with fudge shops, a restaurant, theatre and, thankfully, washrooms. And stairs with fencing.  The view was indeed spectacular. 

Oh, and don't be fooled by the FAKE castle. It is not a castle but a party hall built by somebody name O'Brien in 1835 who, with amazing fortitute, anticipated throngs of tourists at the site just itching to drop their hard earned money on glitzy trinkets and crass tourist rip offs. 

We then made our way to the Doolin Cave, a massive cave discovered by two idiots, aged 18 and 19, in 1952 by crawling into a stream where it exited a moutain and traveling 500 metres IN THE DARK on their bellies into the moutain until they just happend to come across a huge cavern with a giant stalactite. THEN they lit their lanters! To be fair, they weren't really IDIOTS, they were more FOOLS. They were actually with a caving club from England out looking for adventure and spotted the stream. Without regard for their own personal saftety, they decided IN SECRET that they would crawl into the stream and into the hole that the stream had eroded away for the last 10 million years and NOT TELL ANYBODY. Had they gone missing, search parties would STILL be out there looking for them. 

Some of the cave where the "foolish"crawled to reach the cavern. 

We weren't quite as adventerous. We just paid money to climb down 12 stories of staircase, then through tunnels that had been hacked out with air pressure - no dynamite for fear of knocking down the one stalacite that had been growing for 300,000 years, onto the floor of the cave. We donned hard hats. That had been "sanitized", though I had my doubts. However, we did have to return them to a different spot underground to be "sanitized" before being handed out to the next tourists.  Notwithstanding, it was pretty spectatular. 

We ended up ditching our last two stops because, even without them, it was going to be a nine hour day and we were not going to get to the B&B until 6:30 pm. Driving on these back roads are time consuming. Lots of stops to take pictures and lots of avoiding other cars trying to take out our side view mirrors.  

In Galway, we checked into the B&B and immediately investigated dinner options. Since we have been eating relatively healthily since leaving Dublin, we felt we were due for some beer and unhealthy food, so looked for a bar not too far away.  We targeted a place and walked the 13 minutes only to be told they were full and we would have to wait about 40 minutes. Well, that was longer than I had planned to spend there and we were both hungry so we said "no way, Jose".  We opted for another place that I had seen looking for this one and it was a Portuguese place another six minutes on. Just a little hole in the wall, it had 22 seats and was full. But we could see somebody clearing out and we only waited five minutes before we were seated. As we waited, another couple exited and they stopped to tell us how good the food was. They are locals and frequent the restaurant quite regularly. They had been in only two weeks ago. They spotted our Canadian regalia (Nan's large Canadian flag on the front of her sweater and my Canadian flag on my jacket sleeve and they proceeded to tell us how much they admired Mark Carney. 

The food was absolutely amazing at this restaurant, Alma. It is owned and run by a husband and wife who, while visiting on holidays in 2014 thought "we could live here". In 2019, as they started to take steps to move to Galway, received an unsolicted offer to buy their Lisbon restaurant and ended up moving to Galway and starting this one. The wife does all the front of house business, the husband does all the cooking. From what I could see when I was nosing around the counter, they had one employee in the back, whom I suspect did the dishes and probably prep duties. It was very quaint, unsophisticated but an absolute gem. It is a must visit restaurant your next time in Galway.